Fiction as Restriction: Self-Binding in New Ethical Theories of the Novel

Abstract

Since the landmark publication of The Rhetoric of Fiction in 1961, Wayne Booth's theoretical legacy can be found at the heart of at least two major schools of literary criticism. On the one hand, narratologists turn Booth's theory for its insights into the anatomy of narrative form. Seymour Chatman and, more recently, Brian Richardson both defend, for example, Booth's notion of the implied author on pragmatic grounds (Chatman 75): Chatman believes that the implied author helps to account for features [of narrative texts] that would otherwise remain unexplained, or unsatisfactorily explained (74); Richardson similarly argues that the notion of the implied author is coherent and useful one for a wide range of critical practices (165). But for a second school of American theorists, the narratological value of Booth's work cannot be detached from what for Booth makes narratology itself worth pursuing: the ethical effects of rhetorical practices. The ethical dimension of Booth's work has notably been furthered by a younger generation of neoAristotelians who advanced Booth's project within Booth's life time through their coduction with Booth into the ethical power literary texts have upon their readers.' In part because James Phelan, Peter Rabinowitz, and David Richter are contributing this special issue and can speak for themselves about Booth's centrality for narratology and for Chicago-School ethical theory, I would like instead